At First Rally of Election Year, Trump Boasts About Strike on Iranian General

At another point, the president began riffing about the various Democrats running against him before lamenting that they were boring. Watching them, he said, “is like watching death.” Which might explain why he spent time recycling some of his favorite attacks on former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas, who is no longer even in the race.

Toward the end, after an extended attack on Democrats as corrupt, crime-loving socialists who are “stone-cold crazy,” Mr. Trump suddenly stopped and reflected on his own language. “Gee,” he said, “now I sort of understand why they hate me.”

Mr. Trump won Ohio by eight percentage points in 2016, and the state has been the bedrock of every winning Republican presidential candidate going back to the 19th century. Polling in Ohio last fall showed Mr. Trump trailing some of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates in hypothetical matchups, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont by six percentage points and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts by four points, but there has been little recent independent public surveying in the state.

In few places will the economic argument be as important for Mr. Trump’s chances of winning a second term as in the Midwest, where he vowed to rebuild a manufacturing industry that has struggled in recent decades.

“The betrayal of Ohio workers and American workers ended the day I took the oath of office,” he said, citing his revised version of the North American Free Trade Agreement and his trade war with China. “Ohio just had the best year economically in the history of your state,” he claimed at another point, “and this year is going to be even better, maybe much better.”

In fact, unemployment in Ohio fell from a high of 11.1 percent in 2010 to 4.9 percent under President Barack Obama. After Mr. Trump took over, it continued to fall to 4.0 percent by last summer, although in recent months it ticked back up to 4.2 percent. It remains higher than the national rate and among the 10 states with the highest in the country. The state lost 4,400 jobs last year through November and shed 2,200 manufacturing jobs over the previous year.

Ohio Democrats welcomed the president to the state by attacking his “failed policies,” like the “trade war by tweet,” as David Pepper, the state party chairman, put it. “Donald Trump has broken his promises on jobs, on trade, on health care, on education and on so much more,” Mr. Pepper told reporters.



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